Ask, seek, knock

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I am not religious, but I’ve read a fair bit of the Bible, both Old and New Testament, most of The Bhagavad Gita, a little bit of the Quran, the full Tao Te Ching many times, and I’ve dabbled in a few other scriptures.

Of these I’ve studied the Tao Te Ching the most, and at some point I want to explore this 81 verse text even more. But to me one of the most interesting verses from a religious text comes from the book of Matthew in the New Testament:

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

I think that this is more true than we think… and the challenge of this is in what we actually think. Yes, we all know that person that seems to be charmed, they walk through life like the world is their oyster and good things seem to happen to them all the time. And we also know an Eeyore, someone who seems to walk around with his or her own rain cloud, much like the gloomy character in Winnie the Pooh. In both cases these people seem to get what they want, although those things are drastically different from each other. But most people we know are not as extreme as these two characters.

Yet most of us inherently do spend much of our lives getting what we ask for. The thing we don’t realize is that:

We ask the wrong questions.

We seek the wrong things.

We knock on the wrong doors.

There is a lot of talk about the power of positive thinking, and I believe that the truth in it is that thinking positively allows you to ask the right questions, seek the right goals, and find the right doors to open up for you. Yet we often don’t ask the right questions. Have you ever wondered, “Why does stuff like this happen to me?” Ask and it will be given to you.

So often we want things that we don’t know how to properly ask for. We choose to look in the wrong places for luck, love, happiness, wealth, and success. We shut doors on ourselves, blocking opportunities because we don’t believe we are worthy, successful, capable, or even lucky enough to get through the metaphorical door.

This doesn’t mean we should blindly and blissfully go through life thinking positive and suddenly we will get everything we want. It does mean that we should question how we speak to ourselves, how we internalize the things that happen to and around us. When you think the world conspires against you, conspiracies continue to show up. When we wonder why other people are so lucky, we are unintentionally asking ourselves why we are not lucky? When we are bitter because someone else has an opportunity that we want our jealousy closes us off to finding our own similar opportunities.

It’s not magical. It’s not divine intervention. It’s our ability to open ourselves to opportunities and to see them as such. It’s recognizing how we limit ourselves in what we ask and seek… and allowing ourselves to find the right doors when opportunity knocks.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Keep it light

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This is a little reminder to myself to not take everything so seriously. I was away Friday and so yesterday was extremely busy as I tried to catch up on things that needed to get done. I then ended up on the phone or in meetings for most of the morning and spent the afternoon just moving from task to task.

At the end of the day I chose to just stay at work until my PAC meeting at 7pm, so I could keep catching up. After deciding to head out for an early dinner, I went to the bathroom and noticed a teacher still working and about to leave. I’ve known her for about 25 years, when we taught together, and now she’s one of my lead teachers.

“Come join me for dinner, my treat!”

It was such a battery charger having dinner and chatting not just about work. She knows me well and could sense my task-oriented stress levels. She reminded me to keep things light, and to enjoy my day. I work with great people, we have awesome students, and we all work hard… but we need to remember that the best way to get work done is to enjoy our time while at work.

On a day when my whole focus was getting caught up, this was an important reminder.

____

Update: Just did my morning meditation about setting intentions: “I set an intention to seek more joy in my day!”

Meditation Journey

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I’ve been struggling to meditate recently. This is a cycle I go though, and I know it’s because I’ve never really and truly gotten into a meditative state. I intellectually understand that this is a journey that I’m on, and it’s the act of returning my attention to my breath or my point of focus that is the path. I understand that I have to be accepting of the journey I’m on, and to be open to the process.

I get it.

But I also don’t.

I still have yet to reach a state where I am not just redirecting my attention. Sure I’m more forgiving of myself while in the process, and I am quicker to return my attention than I was 4 or 5 years ago… but it’s not so much a meditation exercise as it is an attention exercise.

Every meditation session is a chance for my monkey brain to ‘try to’ quiet down for just a few minutes. That’s a positive thing, it’s not that I’m feeling like I’m wasting my time. I just feel like I’m not moving towards a truly meditative state. Maybe this is it for me? This is as quiet as my brain can get. Or maybe I need a retreat where I push myself for longer than a 15 minute guided meditation?

It just gets a little frustrating because it feels more like I’m on a giant learning plateau rather than a learning journey. It feels like I am working ever so slowly on an attention exercise and I really and truly don’t even know what meditation is? In any event, I’ll keep at it.

Consciousness and AI

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I have a theory about consciousness being on a spectrum. That itself isn’t anything new but I think the factors that play into consciousness are: Basic needs, computational ‘processing’, and idleness. Consciousness comes from having more processing time than needed to meet basic needs, along with the inability for processing (early thinking) to be idle, and so for lack of a better word desires are created.

Think of a very simple organism when all of its needs are met. This isn’t a real thought process I’m going to share but rather a meta look at this simple organism: “I have enough heat, light, and food, what should I do with myself?”

  • Seek better food
  • Move closer to the heat or light source
  • Try different food
  • Join another organism that can help me
  • Find efficiencies
  • Find easier ways to move
  • Hunt

At first, these are not conscious decisions, they are only a choice of simple processes. But eventually, the desires grow. Think decisions that start like, “If I store more energy I can survive longer in times of famine.” And evolve to more of a desire not just for survival but for pleasure (for lack of a better word): “I like this food more than other kinds and want more of it.” …All stemming from having idle processing/thinking time.

I don’t know when ‘the lights turn on‘, when an organism moves from running basic decisions of survival to wanting and desiring things, and being conscious? I believe consciousness is on a spectrum and it is idle processing/thinking time that eventually gets an organism to sentience. It’s sort of like the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy pyramid must be met, (psychological and safety) AND there then needs to be extra, unnecessary processing time, idle time that the processor then uses for what I’m calling desires… interests beyond basic needs.

Our brains are answer-making machines. We ask a question and it answers, whether we want it to or not. If I say what does a purple elephant with yellow polkadots look like? You will inevitably think of what that looks like simply from reading the question. I think that is what happens at a very fundamental level of consciousness. When all needs are met the processors in the brain don’t suddenly stop and sit idle. Instead, the questions arise, “How do I get more food?”, “Where would be better for me to move to?” Eventually all needs are met, but the questions keep coming. At first based on simple desires, but more and more complex over generations and eons of time.

So why did I title this, ‘Consciousness and AI’? I think one of the missing ingredients in developing Artificial General (or Super) intelligence is that we are just giving AI’s tasks to complete and process at faster and faster times, and when the processing of these tasks are completed, the AI sits idle. An AI has no built in desire that an organic organism has to use that idle time to ask questions, to want something beyond completing the ‘basic needs’ tasks it is asked to do.

If we figure out a way to make AI curious, to have it desire to learn more, and to not let itself be idle, at that point it will be a very short path to AI being a lot smarter than us.

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I’m currently listening to Annaka Harris’ audio book ‘LIGHTS ON: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe’ on Audible, and that’s inspiring a lot of my thinking. That said, this post is me rehashing an idea that I had back in December 2019, when I wrote, ‘What does in mean to be conscious?’… I go into this idea of idle time further in that post:

“…life requires consciousness, and it starts with the desire to reproduce. From there, consciousness coincidentally builds with an organism’s complexity and boredom, or idle processing time, when brains do not have to worry about basic survival. Our consciousness is created by the number of connections in our brains, and the amount of freedom we have to think beyond our basic survival.”

My conclusions in that post focused more on animal life, but listening to Annaka’s documentary of interviews with scientists I’m realizing that I really do think there is some level of consciousness right down to the simplest life forms. If it’s idle time and desires that bring about sentience, then figuring out how to make AI’s naturally curious will be the path to artificial general intelligence… Because they are already at a place where they have unused processing time, which is continuing to grow exponentially fast.

Phone Presence

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I’m writing this on my phone. My laptop is only 20 feet away from me and I’d definitely write faster on it, yet here I am on the couch tapping away with one finger at about 1/4 the pace of typing on a real keyboard. I could use voice to text but I find that I am not as reflective when I speak rather that type my thoughts. If I was writing more than a few hundred words, I’d probably head to my laptop, but I’ve gotten very used to writing my blog on my phone and will continue to do so most days.

Phones have become an essential part of our environment that we kind of live in as well as on. We’ve developed a sort of autopoiesis – a kind of a living system that allows it to maintain and renew itself by regulating its own composition and maintaining its own boundaries. It’s sort of a symbiotic relationship where we feed the phone with time and energy, and it self-perpetuates by giving us information, connections, entertainment and other functions.

Our phones help dictate how we interact with our environment and how the environment interacts with us. Phones have become ‘our environment’ that pulls us away from being present in the world beyond our phones. Case in point, there is a very high probability that you are choosing to read this on your phone.

I, for one, spend too much time on my phone. I am slowly learning to change that. I’m not checking email into the night, and I actually have all email notifications turned off. I am going to start keeping my phone on the counter instead of in my pocket for periods of time in the evening. And I’m going to continue to keep my phone on ‘Do not Disturb’ for most of the day, with my family and a handful of closest friends having the ability to ping me when it’s on this mode.

If I’m honest, I will still live in my ‘phone environment’ a fair bit, but I want more choice about when and how much time I live in its presence.

Getting Rest

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It’s not always easy getting enough sleep. Sometimes, no matter how much I try, I feel like I’m not recharging my battery. I’m in bed early, and I wake up many times during the night. Or I actually get to sleep early and get a good night of rest one evening and then my body won’t let me sleep the next night.

Sleep doesn’t seem to accumulate as easily as lack of sleep. I can get a nice recharge from a few good nights in a row, but one bad night undermines that pattern and puts me in a deficit again.

I’m currently on a challenging cycle and it’s making my regular routine difficult, and exhausting. I’ve got to reset a positive sleep pattern, but if I’m honest… I’m off to a crappy start.

What it means to be literate?

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Can you read? Can you do basic math? Is that enough?

The critical thinking required to make sense of the world today is ever increasing. We have a world leader using magical math to make a trade deficit calculation into a reciprocal tariff calculation, and claiming that this is, “Kind reciprocal, not full reciprocal.”

What? Help me make it make sense?

Meanwhile, I saw a video that someone created using AI. He uploaded a pdf article for two AI‘s to discuss, one of the AI’s was a version of himself, with his voice, and the other was a female at a desk. The only thing that suggested to me that the conversation was between two AI’s was some awkward hand gestures. Take those movements away, or make them a bit more natural/realistic and I would have no idea that I was watching an AI conversation.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, there are some wild claims about structures under the great pyramids, and while the evidence is unclear, I’ve seen many videos explaining these not-yet-proven structures. These claims include that they are a network of power sources connected to other structures around the world, and another theory claiming that aliens created them.

And speaking of aliens, wasn’t it just a few short months ago that we ‘discovered’ aliens living in our oceans? What ever happened to that story?

It’s becoming almost impossible to be informationally literate today. By the time you have time to seriously fact check something the story is already old, and there are new crazy claims that require your skeptical attention. What’s the source of this information? Where did they get their data from? What’s the bias of the news source? How is this data being manipulated? Who paid for the study? Is this a real quote? Is this video real, or CGI, or AI?

Who is fact checking the fact checkers? Meanwhile, here in Canada, a fact checker hired by one of our news stations was let go because trolls that don’t like their favourite political party being fact checked brought so much negative attention to her that the news station let her go.

What? Help me make it make sense?

The reality is that reading and writing and doing basic math is not enough to be functionally and informationally literate today. The critical thinking required to simply consume the information being thrown at us is overly demanding. I think the way forward for the short term is to find trusted sources and rely on them… and yet that’s the very thing that has seemed to get us into trouble. How many people get their news from just one or two biased sources? I’m literally now suggesting to find an echo chamber to sit in… hopefully you can find one that echoes facts, common sense, and some semblance of the truth.

Perceptions and misperceptions

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I remember when I was in Grade 9, in a Grade 7-9 Junior High, and I was 4’11”. I was the second shortest Grade 9 and the shortest guy was very popular. I thought about my height a fair bit back then and it bugged me a lot. My perception was that I was tiny and that I’d never grow. The only time I was physically bullied was being put in a locker for all of about 5-10 seconds, and I honestly don’t even remember who did it… but I got a lot of comments about my size and they weren’t always nice. It didn’t help that I was nerdy and only had a small group of friends, but they were good friends and they looked out for me. The reality is that my (lack of) height didn’t really hinder me much, other than in sports, and yet I let my height bug me quite a bit, because I could see everyone growing and I just stayed the same.

Little did I know that I would grow 7-and-a-half inches in the next school year. My mom had to buy me new pants 3 times in that year because it just wasn’t cool wearing floods (pants that didn’t at least reach your ankles).

Today I have a false sense of my height. I’m a little shy of 5’10’ because I’ve shrunk a bit in the last decade, but I often think of myself as taller. I am often surprised when I get close to someone and I realize that I’m 2-3 inches shorter than them… My first impression being that I’m the same height as them. I don’t know if this misperception is related to confidence or something else, but that’s the way I see myself.

I remember playing basketball against a colleague that I’d worked with for a few years. I went to check him and realized he was a lot taller than me. I literally asked him when he grew, because for years I considered us the same height and he’s 6’1. It seems weird to me that I would have this perception of my own hight considering where I came from in Grade 9.

I wonder what other misperceptions I carry with me that I’m not as aware of as this one? What are the things that I think about in ways that help or hinder me as I move about the world? Do I sell myself short in ways that do not serve me well? Do I walk around obliviously confident in other ways that help me navigate things better than I should?

Have you ever had a friend tell you that you needed to work on something that you thought you were good at? Or have you had them compliment you on something you thought you weren’t good at? I think that’s one of the strengths of a good friend, that they don’t see you with the same misperceptions that you see yourself. Because it’s really hard to see your on misperceptions… if you could see them, they would just be perceptions.

Dire consequences

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The inability to process the consequences of your thoughts, words and action is a good definition for stupidity. The thing about stupidity is that even intelligent people can perform acts of stupidity. But repeatedly doing stupid things suggests a lack of intelligence.

I watched a video yesterday of people doing stupid things and getting hurt. One example was a guy standing on someone’s shoulders on a diving board and trying to dive, but slipping while pushing off and landing face first on the diving board. I don’t know if alcohol was part of the decision making, and I don’t know how smart that person might be, but this is a good display of stupidity with dire consequences.

If I said that there’s currently a display of stupidity on a global scale by a political administration, you would automatically know exactly which administration I’m talking about. The difference between the stupidity of the guy on the diving board versus this administration I mention is the scope of the consequences. The diving board guy was the sole sufferer of his stupidity.

I honestly feel like when I am listening to the words and watching the actions of this administration, I am watching a blooper reel of accidents. I’m watching a repeated display of stupidity with dire consequences, and yet the bloopers keep coming: Insulting and even threatening allies, slashing support programs, dissolving institutions, and making economic blunders, all of which are alienating not only global friends, but dividing their nation, and harming their citizens.

This blooper reel isn’t going to be fixed with stitches on a forehead, needed because of an impact with a diving board. The suffering for this stupidity won’t be felt by a single person. This is going to hurt a lot of people, and it’s going to take a long time to recover. The question is, when will the stupidity stop?

I don’t think the guy on the diving board is going to try to repeat that stunt. The question is if he’ll do something equally stupid again… it’s the repeated behaviour that truly moves someone from making a stupid choice to actually just being stupid.

Returning to routines

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I’ll be back at work this morning after our 2-week March break. I’m already enjoying that I’m back into my routine, writing and exercising in the early morning. It’s easy to get off track, and to upset routines when on holidays. I missed workouts, I spent evenings looking for times to write, and I didn’t always eat well.

I am realizing more and more how valuable routines are. Routines are ways to instil discipline and habits so that they are almost effortless. I know what I will be doing next, with no thought and minimal effort to get started. It’s that simple.

When I head into work, I’ll also fairly quickly find myself in a routine. I’ll order my day (barring too many unexpected interruptions) so that I prioritize my team before outside distractions. I’ll create a ‘To Do’ list of priorities, and I’ll also try to find things to enjoy along the way… be it a conversation with students or interactions with staff. In other words, I’ll follow my routines, but also look for some novelty.

There is comfort in routines, but there is also the use of routines to find efficiencies so that I can also do things outside of my routines. My routines are an important part of my journey, but they are not the journey.